It is always a pain for me to understand how to recommend the number of licenses really required for an organisation especially when it comes to determine whether it must be Floating or Fixed. Of course there are other third party paid tools provide better license analysis and usage recommendations.

This blog I’m trying to describe how the license details are recorded when License Tracking enabled in BMC Remedy Server Configuration (Server Information à License Tracking à ALL Licenses). If you can produce a report from this form then this can be used for license usage and evaluation along with LicenseReport.txt generated in the ARServer db folder.

When a user with Fixed license login to remedy all of the Fixed (AR User, Incident, Problem, Change, Asset, SLM, and Financial Management) licenses assigned user profile will be created in the AR System Current License Usage. Up on logout these entries will be deleted from the Current License Usage form and usage history will be recorded in to the AR System Historical License Usage form. The total usage time is displayed are in seconds.

When the user with Floating license login to Remedy via Smart IT or Remedy Mid-Tier an entry will be created in the AR System Current License Usage form as AR User. As and when user access the ITSM Applications the application license will get updated in the Current usage form. When user log out or session timeout reachesthe entries would get deleted from current Usage form andhistory will be recorded in to the AR System Historical License Usage form.

When access via Smart IT the application license usage only get updated based on the ticket type and the usage statistics doesn’t reflect until you open the ticket. For example when a user login to Smart IT who as Incident, Problem and Change floating licenses assigned his People profile. Now the current license usage form will display only AR User license now if the user open the Incident ticket then the Incident User Floating will get updated in the usage form, this will continue to reflect until it reaches the license timeout or user logout whichever is earlier. Now user subsequently open change ticket then another entry creates with Change User Floating entry.

Suppose when a user login to Remedy and there are no free floating license available then Usage form will get updated as AR Floating (Read). Similarly if there are no application licenses then application license also appears as Floating (Read). When the license becomes available a new entry will be created.

Some more details how licenses are assigned when using MyIT/SmartIT.

MyIT uses the license that is assigned to the user, same like how Remedy mid-tier web works. Think of it like an agent logs into mid-tier with floating license, goes into Request entry console, submits a ticket. The agent is not doing any of the service desk backend activities, but you can still see the floating license is used. MyIT behaves the same way.

The behaviour in MyIT is that, Floating license will be released after the user logs out of the application. If you close the browser or if the application times out, the license will be release 30 minutes (default) after closing the browser or application timeout. The session timeout configuration is configurable in MyIT (Smart IT Tomcat web.xml).

Update tab has a background job which will pull latest activity stream every 30 seconds (similar to the updates that you see in FB, linkedIn etc). That’s why you cannot see session timeout if you stay on update tab. BMC assumption is that 99% of MyIT users are end users with Read license.

If you have Kerberos enabled environment and a user with floating license access MyIT then technically you are consuming an AR Floating license. Suppose if the user left the MyIT window open under Updates tab then technically the license timeout or session timeout never occurs.

Keep up with us

Random Blogpost

The main marketplace challenges are keeping IT free and clear of viruses introduced by hackers. Targeted email attacks are also exploiting client-side vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader, Apple QuickTime, Adobe Flash and Microsoft Office.